WHEN DOES ENOUGH BECOME TOO MUCH?
I've had days, and I'm sure most of you have as well, where you look back as you go to bed and see nothing but a mosaic of box scores, channel flipping and bet tickets in the rearview mirror. It is especially prevalent during football season but it happens other times as well. You wake up early, pour yourself some Fruity Pebbles and get to work on the 11 a.m. EST games, then the 1 p.m. EST games, then the 4:30 p.m. EST games and so on and so forth. Day bleeds into night and when the Hawaii game goes final it nearly take a degree in statistics to determine if you actually won or lost money on the day.
Depending on how one's time is used on these marathon days, the spectrum of wise gambling can range from razor sharp to totally half assed. Those who handicap just by looking at lines and picking winners and then determine bet amounts by how much money they need to catch up on at any given time are lost causes. No need to advise them in this column because countless thousands of words on this site have already been written in appempting to save them. What is something to be concerned with, however, is the people who actually take their time and research games thoroughly. At what point in a marathon day does one reach burnout, and how do you know when to call it a day and leave possible wagers on the table?
Using myself as an example, I generally try for a two hour limit. I have found that when I spend over two hours handicapping, I get punchy in a way similar to a college student on an all nighter. Doubts become raised at good plays, shady plays begin to look stronger and sooner or later it seems almost every game can be justified either as a play or no play. I just end up losing any direction I had at the start of the day and I find myself completely ignoring any standard of dollar amounts or number of plays I may have set for myself going into the day.
Two hours may sound like a small number, or it may sound incredibly large. My day is actually longer than two hours because I try to spend a number of hours actually watching games to try to pick up notes that I can use for future handicapping. The two hours is just a straight research number. The point is that each handicapper should get familiar with themselves (no, not in that way you perverts) and understand where the upper thresholds of research time lie.
Too little research on games is obviously one of the bigger reasons that so many gamblers lose money, but too much time spend processing data can also become counterproductive. There is no shame in passing a few games just because your time limit for the day expired and there are unresearched games on the table. A far more important objective should be to keep yourself healthy psychologically by limiting research to a reasonable amount of time.
I've had days, and I'm sure most of you have as well, where you look back as you go to bed and see nothing but a mosaic of box scores, channel flipping and bet tickets in the rearview mirror. It is especially prevalent during football season but it happens other times as well. You wake up early, pour yourself some Fruity Pebbles and get to work on the 11 a.m. EST games, then the 1 p.m. EST games, then the 4:30 p.m. EST games and so on and so forth. Day bleeds into night and when the Hawaii game goes final it nearly take a degree in statistics to determine if you actually won or lost money on the day.
Depending on how one's time is used on these marathon days, the spectrum of wise gambling can range from razor sharp to totally half assed. Those who handicap just by looking at lines and picking winners and then determine bet amounts by how much money they need to catch up on at any given time are lost causes. No need to advise them in this column because countless thousands of words on this site have already been written in appempting to save them. What is something to be concerned with, however, is the people who actually take their time and research games thoroughly. At what point in a marathon day does one reach burnout, and how do you know when to call it a day and leave possible wagers on the table?
Using myself as an example, I generally try for a two hour limit. I have found that when I spend over two hours handicapping, I get punchy in a way similar to a college student on an all nighter. Doubts become raised at good plays, shady plays begin to look stronger and sooner or later it seems almost every game can be justified either as a play or no play. I just end up losing any direction I had at the start of the day and I find myself completely ignoring any standard of dollar amounts or number of plays I may have set for myself going into the day.
Two hours may sound like a small number, or it may sound incredibly large. My day is actually longer than two hours because I try to spend a number of hours actually watching games to try to pick up notes that I can use for future handicapping. The two hours is just a straight research number. The point is that each handicapper should get familiar with themselves (no, not in that way you perverts) and understand where the upper thresholds of research time lie.
Too little research on games is obviously one of the bigger reasons that so many gamblers lose money, but too much time spend processing data can also become counterproductive. There is no shame in passing a few games just because your time limit for the day expired and there are unresearched games on the table. A far more important objective should be to keep yourself healthy psychologically by limiting research to a reasonable amount of time.
